Original Review: February 22, 2011

Songs of Fascination

Murakami sings to me of fascination. I still haven't worked out why.

I could analyse the sensation until it died on the operating table.

Or I could focus on just keeping the sensation alive.

Or, somewhere in between, I could speculate that it's because Murakami sits over the top of modern culture like a thin gossamer web, intersecting with and touching everything ever so lightly, subtly expropriating what he needs, bringing it back to his writer's desk or table, and spinning it into beautiful, haunting tales that fail to stir some, but obsess others like literary heroin.


Sins of Fascination

Pending a more formal review, below is a song that I pieced together by way of dedication to the book and Paul Bryant's parody.

The song careers all over the surface of the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" and "Paperback Writer", so I probably owe them and you an apology, but it seemed like an apt way to celebrate Murakami at the time.

As these things often do, it emerged in a thread on a review of this novel.

In the cold hard light of retrospect, I don't know what I was thinking.
Nor can I remember what I was drinking when I thought it up.

However, if any one ever creates or releases a soundtrack to Murakami's novels, I'll play it every day of my life.

Or as Paul jokingly suggested, there might even be a musical in there somewhere. (For someone else, maybe even Murakami, to create.)


"Sister Feelings Call" (or "Wind-Up Bird and Black Cat") (A Sonic Chronicle)

"I once had a bird or should I say she once had me.
She had a passing resemblance to Halle Berry.

She showed me her room, and said
"Isn't it good, this neighbourhood?"
She asked me to stay and said she'd written a book.
It took her years to write, would I take a look.

I read a few pages of parody and started to laugh.
It was then that she told me she was only one half.
She had a twin sister called Sally she'd like me to meet.
She lived in an alley at the end of the street.

She told me she worked in the morning and went off to bed.
I left her room, a brand new idea in my head.
When I got there, that alley was dead at both ends,
Just me, a black cat and a few of its friends."


Paul Bryant's Review

Paul Bryant has written an excellent parody of Murakami in his review of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle".

It absolutely nailed Haruki Murakami's writing style in this book:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...


"The History of Love"

While reading Nicole Krauss' "The History of Love", I came across a passage that called out for the Paul Bryant approach and leant itself to a retort to Paul's parody.

This often happens once you have been touched by the magic hand of Paul Bryant.

His reviews set the bar high, but invite you to jump.

I urge you to read "The History of Love" if you haven't already:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...


A Parody in the Style of Paul Bryant's Review of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"

I fell into bed wearing my clothes minus my underwear.

It was past midnight when the telephone rang.

I awoke from a dream in which I was teaching Haruki Murakami how to write satire.

Sometimes I have nightmares. But this wasn’t one.

We were in my club, Dusty Springfield was playing, live.

Later no one could remember having seen her, and because it was impossible to understand how Dusty Springfield would have been playing at my club, no one believed me. But I saw her.

A siren sounded in the distance. Just as Dusty opened her mouth to sing, the dream broke off and I woke up in the darkness of my bedroom, the rain pitter-pattering on the glass.

The telephone continued to ring. Haruki, no doubt. I would have ignored it if I hadn’t been afraid he’d call the police.

I threw off the sheets and stumbled across the floor, banging into a table leg.

“Hello?” I shouted into the phone, but the line was dead.

A moment later the phone rang again. “OK, OK,” I said, picking up the receiver. “No need to wake up the whole building.” There was a silence on the other end. I said, “Haruki?”

“Is this Mr. Ian Graveski?”

I assumed it was someone trying to sell me something.

He sounded English. Like one of those guys with a microphone trying to get you to come into their 50p shop, only it’s a recording.

But the man said he wasn’t trying to sell me anything.

“My name is Paul Bryant.”

His cat was stuck on his roof. He’d called Information for the number of a roof and guttering specialist.

I told him I was retired. Paul paused. He seemed unable to believe his bad luck. He’d already called three other people and no one had answered.

“It’s pouring out here,” he said.

“OK, OK,” I said, even though I didn’t want to say it.

“I’ll have to dig up my tools.”

When I arrived, it wasn’t only a cat that was on his roof.

When I looked up, I noticed that a completely naked woman was sitting on the roof, eating a slice of thinly buttered toast.

I asked her who she was and she said she was not able to divulge this information.

She wouldn’t even divulge her name to Paul, who did not seem to be surprised that she was on his roof, sitting next to his cat.

She asked if she could come home with me in my car.

I explained that she would have to get off the roof first.

I noticed that her body was almost the same as that of my ex-wife.

She had firm but smallish breasts, and although the ladder obscured her body as she descended, I was confident that the rest of her would soon look familiar.

When we got home, I offered her my ex-wife's silk pyjamas.

But she shook her head as she slid into my bed, saying she wouldn’t need them.

It was past 3am when the telephone rang again.

I recognised the voice. It was Paul Bryant.

“My cat,” he said. “It’s still on the bloody roof.”

It was still raining, but I did not care.

"Sorry, Mr Bryant, I'm doing another house call. Besides, I'm retired."

I returned to the warmth in my bed.